The Orchardist

A native of Washington who grew up in the state's eastern orchards, Amanda Coplin imbues this breathtaking first novel with a profound sense of the land and the people who are part of it. At the turn of the 20th century, before roads and telephone lines have connected everyone to everyone else, a gentle recluse named William Talmadge tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. Then two teenage girls, pregnant and on the run, steal fruit from his market stand, and Talmadge, haunted by a sense of responsibility for his own long-lost sister, opens his heart to them.

"Amanda Coplin's somber, majestic debut arrives like an urgent missive from another century. Steeped in the timeless rhythms of agriculture, her story unfolds in spare language as her characters thrash against an existential sense of meaninglessness.... In fewer than 100 pages, Coplin has established the brooding central theme for the rest of her novel: People don't get over their losses and failures; they try to make up for them in disastrous ways.... Coplin's saga of a makeshift family unmoored by loss should be depressing, but, instead, her achingly beautiful prose inspires exhilaration."—Washington Post